I was recently discussing punk movies with a writer friend of mine, and I mentioned how much I love the film Repo Man.

I have previously referred to that movie as the best punk film ever made. And that is a raw point of contention for many followers of that hardcore music faith. Years ago I made a post in an online punk forum stating “Repo Man is the best punk movie ever made.”

That’s it. That’s all I did. I just said that in a post and never contributed to the following conversation which was a very long and raucous thread of comment and replies. Some people had problems with my identifying Repo Man as a punk film. (It is. I reject any arguments otherwise!) Other people started offering their own nominations for best punk film, and that’s when the arguments started. It went from people blasting each other over which film was the best to accusations of certain films not being punk, and then it devolved into a flame war over the very definition of punk!

(If you ask ten punks what punk is, you will get fifteen different answers.)

It got ugly quick. People were accusing others of being posers, of not really being punk, and then some really rank insults and even threats of physical violence started flying. (Yes, threatening to beat heads on an internet forum. Very butch!) And all I did was make that post. Not once did I ever comment or reply to any comments in the thread that involved scores of group users and hundreds of comments and replies. It was like dropping a lit match onto a stack of dry hay.

So goes the internet. It’s amazing what will spark a rousing flame war or an off-kilter debate.

What will and will not attract the attention of social media crawlers and inspire their passions is always interesting to me, and sometimes discouraging.

A friend of mine is a member of a large and active punk Facebook group. Like myself, he is clean and sober, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. He came across a documentary about punks in recovery, a film about the affects of drug and alcohol abuse among punks and how it permeated punk culture. He posted a link to a trailer about the documentary in the Facebook group. It got a few likes, like literally two or three likes and no comments. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The comments section was a ghost town.

Not too long after posting that link he posted a silly meme about Satan in the very same Facebook group. It had a picture of a deviled horn Beelzebub or Baphomet or whatever you want to call it, and it read “Like if you love Satan. Ignore if you love Satan. Comment if you hate God.”

What was supposed to be a goofy jab about Satanic stuff inspired a lot of comments, not only about the meme itself, but diatribes on religion and spirituality. Some punks actually said that promoting Satan was akin to promoting Christianity since acknowledging Satan was legitimizing the Bible, and a rowdy debate took place.

The thread on the silly Satan meme was long enough, and people started getting testy and taking things personally as they argued and got twisted up over something that was supposed to be a joke. People who listen to loud thrashy music are always tossing Satanic references around as a lark, and the meme was making fun of that.

The whole point of this tale of two different posts in an online punk community is that a serious documentary looking over the subject of substance abuse in the punk scene was virtually ignored, and when a dorky goof of a meme went up, it not only ruffled feathers but started an angry debate.

I would hope to live in a world where a serious documentary about a serious subject would get more attention, comments, and discussion than a ridiculous meme. I’ve made posts about subject matters such as string theory, the Shakespeare authorship question, problems with twelve step culture, and made similes between the Covid-19 pandemic and the HIV epidemic. (Mostly about the conservatives who made those situations worse with their policies.) Those kinds of subjects hardly ever garner any real attention in the form of reactions or comments. And then I remember two things: One of the most vicious threads I’ve ever seen and the one Tweet of mine that went viral.

One of the worst internet debates and one of the most atrocious flame wars I ever saw was a thread about glitter beards.

Glitter beards.

I repeat, glitter beards.

Yes, the topic of men who put glitter in their beards to make them sparkle ignited one of the most vicious internet exchanges I’ve ever seen. It got so bad that the forum user who posted the article on the subject eventually took it down to stop the brawl. For quite a few users in that chaotic thread the topic of men, masculinity, and sexual preference were the hot button issues, and the morality of masculine culture was put on the line by the application of sparkly plastic to one of the most manly things a man can have: Lots of hair on his face! The article about glitter beards did not even indicate if the glitter beard men were gay or straight, but it didn’t need to in order to get those internet ramblers up in arms with virtual pitchforks and torches!

Maybe we can get these internet partisans steamed up about homelessness or income inequality or some similarly important topic. I know it’s not all bad. I know the bulk of fiery rhetoric has been about politics lately, especially because of the dumpster fire known as the Trump administration with people going after extreme right wing Trump supporters on all social media platforms, but still, what can set people off and what can grab the attention of internet surfers and make something go viral can oftentimes be astounding.

Which brings me to my Tweet. Of all the things I’ve posted on my Twitter, sometimes about serious political or social issues but mostly about my writing, the one Tweet that I had go viral on Twitter was a single and simple question:

What is your favorite dinosaur?

Yep.

I’ll give that one a pass. I can at least qualify it as substantial since it has to do with paleontology!